oyed the pleasure
of buttonholing a celebrity; a state of things which appeared to Miss
Stackpole to indicate a deplorable want of enterprise. "If I were on the
other side I should call," she said, "and tell the gentleman, whoever
he might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see
for myself. But I gather from what you say that this is not the custom
here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of those
that would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall
have to give up the social side altogether;" and Henrietta, though
she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter to the
Interviewer about the Tower (in which she described the execution of
Lady Jane Grey), had a sad sense of falling below her mission.

The incident that had preceded Isabel's departure from Gardencourt left
a painful trace in our young woman's mind: when she felt again in her
face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last suitor's
surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could
not have done less than what she did; this was certainly true. But her
necessity, all the same, had been as graceless as some physical act in
a strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for her
conduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride, nevertheless, was a feeling of
freedom which in itself was sweet and which, as she wandered through the
great city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally throbbed into
odd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped
the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the
grass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when
they were pretty, kissed them. Ralph noticed these quaint charities;
he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might
pass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had
the house set in order as much as possible for their visit. There
was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of
Ralph's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with
Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr.
Bantling, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed,
universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at
everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her
society the bric-a-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable colle